Great Throughts Treasury

"The eternal Venus (caprice, hysteria, fantasy) is one of the seductive forms of the Devil."

"The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist."

"The form of a town changes more swiftly alas! than the heart of a mortal."

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist."

"The habit of doing one's duty drives away fear."

"The idea of beauty which man creates for himself imprints itself on his whole attire, crumples or stiffens his dress, rounds off or squares his gesture, and in the long run even ends by subtly penetrating the very features of his face. Man ends by looking like his ideal self. These engravings can be translated either into beauty or ugliness; in one direction, they become caricatures, in the other, antique statues."

"The idea that man is the fine print in all its adjustment, crumples or stiffens his coat, rounds or aligns his gesture, and even enters subtly, over time, the features of his face. The man ends up looking like it wants to be."

"The idea which man forms of beauty imprints itself throughout his attire, rumples or stiffens his garments, rounds off or aligns his gestures, and, finally, even subtly penetrates the features of his face."

"The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality."

"The immense profundity of thought in vulgar locutions, like holes dug by generations of ants."

"The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, & which life reveals is the most living proof of our immortality."

"The lamp having at last resigned itself to death. There was nothing now but firelight in the room, and every time a flame uttered a gasp for breath it flushed her amber skin with the blood of its bloom."

"The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it."

"The lover of life makes the whole world into his family, just as the lover of the fair sex creates his from all the lovely women he has found, from those that could be found, and those who are impossible to find."

"The mainspring of genius is curiosity."

"The man who gets on best with women is the one who knows best how to get on without them."

"The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself or someone else, as he chooses? The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion? What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire... to the unexpected as it comes along, the stranger as he passes."

"The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep."

"The misery of the cuckold. It springs from his pride, from a false conception of honor and of happiness, and from a love foolishly turned from God to be attributed to creatures. It is ever the worshipping animal deluded with its idol."

"The mixture of the grotesque and the tragic is agreeable to the spirit, as are discords to the jaded ear."

"The moral meaning of clothing. Satisfactions produced by the dressing."

"The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute."

"The more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes."

"The more delicate and ambitious the soul, the further do dreams estrange it from possible things."

"The more one works, the better one works, and the more one wants to work. The more one produces, the more fertile one grows."

"The most beautiful of the devil's tricks is to persuade you that he does not exist."

"The observer is a prince who enjoys his incognito everywhere. The lover of life makes the world his family, just as the lover of the fair sex devises his family from all discovered, discoverable and undiscoverable beauties; as the lover of pictures lives in an enchanted society of painted dreams on canvas."

"The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart)."

"The owls: under the overhanging yews, the dark owls sit in solemn state, like stranger gods; by twos and twos their red eyes gleam. They meditate. Motionless thus they sit and dream until that melancholy hour when, with the sun's last fading gleam, the nightly shades assume their power. From their still attitude the wise will learn with terror to despise all tumult, movement, and unrest; for he who follows every shade, carries the memory in his breast, of each unhappy journey made."

"The photographic industry was the refuge of all the painters who couldn't make it, either because they had no talent or because they were too lazy to finish their studies. Hence this universal infatuation was not only characterized by blindness and stupidity, but also by vindictiveness."

"The People adore authority."

"The phrase "a literature of decadence" implies a scale of literature: infancy, childhood, adolescence, etc. This term, I would say, supposes something fateful and providential, like an inescapable decree; and it is completely unjust to reproach us for the fulfillment of a law that is mysterious. All I can understand of this academic saying is that it is shameful to obey this law pleasurably, and that we are guilty of rejoicing in our destiny."

"The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present."

"The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes."

"The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day; But on the ground, among the hooting crowds, He cannot walk, his wings are in the way."

"The Poet is like the prince of the clouds who haunts the storm and laughs at the archer; exiled on earth amid jeers, his giant wings prevent him from walking."

"The powerful oblivion lives on your lips, and Lethe flows in your kisses."

"The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things."

"The priest is immense because I believe in others makes a heap of weird things. The Church wanting to do everything and be everything: it is a law of human spirit. Peoples adore authority. Priests are the servants and followers of imagination. The throne and the altar revolutionary maxim."

"The Revolution had been made by voluptuaries."

"The room was filled with deep, raucous sighs, sudden sobs, silent floods of tears. The horrified musician stopped, and going up to the man whose bliss was expressing itself most noisily, he asked him if he was in great pain and what would help to relieve it. But the sick man, his eyes gleaming ecstatically, looked at him with unspeakable contempt. Fancy wanting to save a man sick with too much life, sick with joy!"

"The saddest thing is that every love has an unhappy ending, and all the more unhappy in proportion to how divinely it began, with what wings it first took flight."

"The sap rises and, itself a mixture of elements, flowers in a mixture of tones; the trees, the rocks, the granites cast their reflections in the mirror of the water; all the transparent objects seize and imprison color reflections, both close and distant, as the light passes through them. As the star of day moves, the tones change in value, but always respect. Their mutual sympathies and Natural hatreds, and continue to live in harmony by reciprocal Concessions. The shadows move slowly and drive before them or blot out the tones as the light itself, changing position, sets vibrating others. These mingle their reflections, and, modifying their qualities by casting them over and borrowed transparent glazes, multiply to infinity Their melodious marriages and make them Easier to achieve. When the great ball of fire sinks into the waters, network fanfares fly in all directions, a blood-red harmony spreads over the horizon, turns green to a deep red. But soon vast blue shadows chase them rhythmically before the crowd of orange and soft tones, which are like the distant and muted echoes of the light. This great symphony of today, which is the eternally Renewed variation of the symphony of yesterday, it is a succession of melodies, Where the variety comes always from the infinite, it is a complex hymn is called color."

"The sea conveys the thought both of immensity and of movement. Six or seven leagues are for man the radius of the infinite. 'Tis a diminutive infinite. What matter, if it suffice to suggest the whole?"

"The snake dancing. What I like to see, dear indolent of your body so beautiful, like a flickering stuff, Shimmering Skin! Upon your heavy hair Aux acres perfumes, odorant sea With blue and brown waves, like a ship awakening the morning wind, My dreamy soul sets sail For a distant sky. Your eyes where nothing is revealed by sweet or bitter, are two cold jewels that combines gold with iron. To see you walk rhythmically, Belle abandonment, seems like a snake dance at the end of a stick. Under the weight of your laziness your child's head if balanced softness from a young elephant, and your body bends and s 'lengthens Like a fine ship That rolls from side to side and dips Its yards in the water. Like a stream swollen by melting the rumbling glaciers, When the water of your mouth back the edge of your teeth, I think drinking a wine bohemian, Amer and winner, A liquid sky that scatters D'stars my heart!"

"The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers."

"The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa."

"The soul is a thing so impalpable, so often useless and sometimes so embarrassing that I suffered, upon losing it, a little less emotion than if I had mislaid, while out on a stroll, my calling-card."

"The storm rejuvenates the flowers."

"The story of my love is like an endless journey through a pure and smooth surface like a mirror, dizzyingly monotonous reflect all my feelings and gestures with the ironic accuracy of my own conscience, so I could not afford gesture or feeling that it was not reasonable without seeing immediately counterclaim my inseparable specter moves. Love appeared to me as a protection. How many nonsense prevented him to do, so I'm not having committed! How many debts paid against my will! I deprived them of all the benefits that could I draw from my own madness."